Sunday, September 14, 2014

The US has been intermittently
bombing Iraq since the 1991 First Iraq War. We have just resumed
bombing once again.

If you do something for 25 years and
it still has not solved your problem is it not time to ask whether a
different tactic might be more promising?

“If at first you don't succeed,
try, try, try again” makes little sense. One should learn from
failures, not repeat them endlessly. Moreover,
we need to think about the
immense damage our bombing of Iraq has done.

We feel entitled to wage war in the
Middle East because of the almost 3000 people killed 13 years ago on
9/11. But we have killed easily a hundred times as many innocent
civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have been chillingly callous
about the damages we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Pakistan
and elsewhere. (Libya also needs to be mentioned here.)

We see the result of our bloody
policies in the ISIS. That army has been strengthened by thousands
streaming to its ranks from everywhere. We have ravaged that part of
the world and made many, many enemies.

If we killed them all, would that
solve the problem of terrorist threats? No one, who thinks at all,
believes that. We would only be hated by that many more people who
would be willing to fight us anywhere, with any weapons they could
find or invent.

A “war” on terrorism is a really
stupid idea. Terrorists hate us. Making war on them only makes them
hate us more.

The only way to reduce the terrorist
threat is reduce the world-wide animosity against us. Dropping bombs,
sending American soldiers, is not the most promising way to improve
our reputation as good and valuable neighbors in the world.

ISIS appears to be dangerous and
brutal. Perhaps a short term, immediate military reaction is needed.
But such military responses are no more than a stop gap measures,
that are really undesirable and should only be considered as a last
resort.

But the Obama White House seems to
have no other ideas about blunting the terrorist threat over the long
haul.

Here are some things the US needs
to do.

1. Stop being so incredibly
arrogant.

Our Secretaries of State, Hillary
Clinton and now John Kerry, travel around the globe telling people to
govern themselves democratically. “Be like us”they tell them. How
would we feel if government leaders of other countries offered advice
to us on how to deal with racist police in Ferguson and elsewhere, or
with the massive failures of the VA? Exactly. That's how others feel
about us.

More generally, we continuously
tell others what to do. When is the last time that we have gone to
another people and asked them a question, or asked for information or
for their opinions. We act as if we could not learn from anyone.

2. Stop being ignorant.

Americans travel around the world
speaking English. They expect everyone to speak our tongue. We make
little effort to learn the languages of others. That does not win us
many friends.

The public debate leading up to the
attack on Iraq was shamefully ill-informed. Parading our ignorance we
nevertheless insist that we are the leading country on the globe.
That is not likely to raise our popularity.

3. Pick our friends thoughtfully.

Israelis and Palestinians have been
at war with each other since the 1920s, long before there was a State
of Israel. Theirs is a bitter and intractable conflict. But it is not
our fight. There is no reason for the US government to act as if
Israel was the 51st
state of the union. If we want to work towards more amicable
relations with the peoples of the Mid-East we need to distance
ourselves from Israel.

During the Iran-Iraq war between
1980 and 1988, we sometimes sided with and supported Iraq and then
turned abut to support Iran. The nations in the Mid-East learned that
we were not to be trusted.

In Syria we have opposed the
government of Bashar al-Assad—until two days ago when we decided
his bomb his enemies, ISIS. Suddenly we are supporting Bashar
al-Assad. Our policy shifts unpredictably. That does not make us good
allies.

There are many other ways in which
we have attracted a great deal of enmity in the Mid-East.

If we are to reduce the terrorist
threat, we need to change our ways and persuade our enemies that we
have changed. We need to prove ourselves to be good neighbors instead
of arrogant, ill-informed, bullies.

Both of those will be very difficult
and take time, but nothing else will do.